ASSYRIA
ASSYRIA
183
incursion into Xorth Mesopotamia and conquered the land of Kuinmttkk (^Coniinagene, on the farther bank of the Euphrates). The Kurl<hi (Kurdi?). who lived in the mountainous districts towards Armenia, had also joined the Mosks as allies. The scene of the war lay between Comma!;ene on the Euphrates and the Gordyan mountains on the Upper Tisiris. We may conclude from their names that the tribes of th«:se districts were all of Hittite and non-Semitic nationality. The names of two of the hostile kings conquered by Tiglath-pileser are of special interest, Kili-Tishup son of Kali- Tishup, and StiJi- Tish up son of Khatu- shar. Tishup was tlie name of one of the Hittite gods. In the tiiue of Ramses II. we hear of a Hittite named Tar-Tishbu. Moreover, the old storm god of Armenia and Mitanni was called Tishupash ; and, finally, the same name for a god turns up again in Susa as Tishpak. Khatu-shar, too, is identical with Kheta-sar, by whicli name a Hittite foe of Ramses II. is called. Now Khitu was a divinity of tlie Hittite poi)ulation scattered about from the west of Asia Minor to Elam. The names of the Lydian kings, Aly-attes and Sady-attcs, which were formed like Kali-Tishup and Satli-Tishup, prove this, for the god Attes, spelt in Aramaic in- scriptions ijhate ('??, -7aTi5 in 'Xrap-yaTit ; -xfTu in AepKtTw), cannot be any other than the one which apijcars in Khatu-shar.
Xorth of Kunimukh, Tiglath-pileser made tri- butarj' the land of Khani-rabhat, so often men- tioned in the cuneiform inscriptions (the great Kheta-land of the Egyp. inscriptions), near Milid (.Malatiyeh). This country (erroneously transcribed Khani-galbat by some Assyriologists) was the old mother-land of the Hitlites. There was no longer, however, a great Hittite empire at the lime of Tiglath-pileser, but the Aramaeans had attempted to establish themselves in several places in the north of Syria and Mesopotamia. Tiglath-pileser expelled them from the region between the Euphrates and Belikh, the original country of the .Mit,anni, and plundered their pasture-grounds which were situated along the farther bank of the Euphrates, the land of Sukhi (Shuah, (lU 2'y- ; Job i'l, • Uildad the Shuhite'). lie also conquered by force of arms the land of Mnsri in West Armenia, again.st which Shalnianeser I. had formerly waged war, and the Cappadocian district of Kumiinu, which w.is in alliance with it. Thus he not only restored his kingdom to the size it had attained in the time of .Shalmaneser I., but expanded it still farther, especially in the direction of Armenia ; and by jiashing forward towards North Syria and the .Mediterranean, mapped out the path for Assyr. expeditions in the future. The Bab. king Mnrdnk- nadin-akhi (cf. above, p. 179'') succeeded in robbing the Assyrians of the images of Ramman and his consort Sliala which belonged to the (Mesojio- tamian?) town Ikallati, but Tiglath-pileser in- flicted a signal defeat upon him in his own country. Amidst all these exjieditions, architecture and the material welfare of the country were not neglected by Tiglath-pileser, who bestowed special attentiim upon the restoration of the old temple of the gods Anu and Ramman in the ancient capital .Vssur (cf. above, p. 180").
Tiillath-pileser was succeeded by his son Ashur- licl-kala (' Assur is Lord of All'), who removed the royal residence from Kalakh to Nineveh, lie married the daughter of the Rab. king Rammiin- l)al-idina, but evidently died without children, since liis lirotlier tiamsi-RiKiimUn III. succeeded him on the throne. We possess an earnest petition of the son of the latter, As.iHr-na::ir-prtl II., to the goddess Istar of Nineveh, in which he prays that he may be cured of an illness. After this (c. VW) As^yi-i:! uiid'Twcnt a ]i<>riod of di'cliiie.
during which not even the names of the kings have been preserved. We only know of one of them, Assur-Mii (c. 900?), who set up an image of himself at the Gulf of Issus, and from whom the Araniieans took away the two fortresses on the Euphrates, Pitrii (Peihor, Nu 22', Dt 23<) and Mutkhitt, which had been conquered in the time of Tiglath-pileser I.
The powerful development of the Aramaeans at this time is also clearly reflected in OT, in the hi.story of David (see 2 S 10"', where Hadadezer brings Aramaeans from the other sitle of the Euphrates). The growth of the power of Israel under Saul, David, and Solomon forms a striking contrast to the decline of Assyria about H.c. 1000.
Probably the immediate successor of this Assur- irbi was Tuklut-pat-i^arra (Tiglath-pileser) //. After him we have an accurate and genealogical list of kings, without any gaps at all.
Tighath-pileser 1 1, c. 970.
Assur-dan II. (son of above) c. K.c. 930-913. (Here the Eponym Canon begins).
Ramman-nirari II. (son of above) B.C. 912-801.
Tuklat-Nindar II. (son of above) B.C. 890-885.
Assur-nazir-pal III. (son of above) B.C. 884-860. Under the last named king a new period of development commenced for Assyria. Of the four predecessors of Assur-nazir-pal, we only know that Ramman-nir3,ri II. waged some wars against his Bab. contemporaries Samas-mudammik and the latter's successor Nabultim-iskun ; and that Tuklat-Nindar advanced to the sources of the Tigris, and threw his heart into the task of again reducing to subjection the mountainous districts in the north, a work which was continued by Assur-nazir-pal and .Shalmaneser II. For the con- quests made by Tiglath-pileser I., after so much effort, had been lost again long ago.